


You shouldn't laugh in libraries

by Hasuruzaf



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, everyone is human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 19:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30144522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hasuruzaf/pseuds/Hasuruzaf
Summary: Alex is waiting for his class partner to show up.
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	You shouldn't laugh in libraries

Forty-seven minutes. He had been seated there for forty-seven minutes straight.

Oh sure, he could have begun their assignment while waiting but he had promised to himself - well, more to the band - that he would never ever again do all of the work of a group assignment by himself. The last time he had done so, Reggie got really mad. Alex had to talk him down of going to the other students’ place and risking making a scene. First of all, it would have been really embarrassing to have the little guy act like he was Alex’s dad trying to defend his honor over homework. Also, Alex didn’t really care that he had once more done all of the research, compiling and presentation by himself. He liked that aspect of college and the fact that other members of his groups always seemed happy with letting him in charge of the team assignments was nice as he could ensure the final draft was perfect.

So yeah, he would have been more than happy to put those forty-seven lost forever minutes to use. Instead of building this dangerous murderous energy he now had in every cell of his body. He hated waiting. He hated wasting time. He hated not being able to work the way he liked to.

But of course, Reggie and Luke were right, as always. As much as he liked to handle everything by himself there were multiple issues with that. One was that it went against the initial intent of the professors. And maybe, just maybe, they had an ulterior motive to making the students work together, and not say, make everyone miserable because teamwork with strangers was always a pain in the ass. Yeah sure, they were preparing students for their “future” because later in life they would have to work with other people and if they didn’t prepare ahead of that they wouldn’t know how to handle every situation that came with that type of work.

“Mister Mercer, I’ll have you know that even in the research world that you seem to pursue, you’ll have to collaborate with people you’re not especially comfortable with” had said Mrs. Maton, as it became clear after questions she asked to the students of the group presentation he just made that Alex was the only one who knew anything about the subject they had presented. Whatever, he got an A-, that was all that had mattered. He was pretty sure the minus was because he had rolled his eyes at the end of it all.

He was past rolling his eyes as it was now fifty-two minutes of waiting. He was going to kill the guy. And the lady that kept glaring at him. Not his fault that his knee kept moving up and down. 

Another of the issue he could have with doing of all the work by himself was the fact that his classmates were more susceptible to take advantage of him. That was the thing Luke and Reggie hated the most about the whole situation. He didn’t really care as it meant he could handle everything by himself in peace, not even bothering anymore to answer the messages he occasionally got like the classic “sorry got hammered really bad last night ill be sending u my part this afternoon” by anything else than “It’s ok I done it” as he already planned that he would never get the part the past night or the following afternoon or ever anyway. Not trusting his classmates was one the first thing he learned in college. Not having any good expectation of anyone new. It made everything easier.

Fifty-four minutes. Fifty-fucking-four minutes. His ass was going to merge with that oh so uncomfortable chair. And he was going to merge the table with the guy’s face when, and if, he finally showed up. Glaring-girl glared harder as if she disapproved his thoughts. Or maybe his leg moving was that annoying. He sighed and tried to calm down.

The real reason why he decided to try that whole thing of not doing everything by himself was, like always, because of Luke and Reggie. And maybe Julie. You couldn’t say no to Julie. The girl probably taught the sun how to shine. You kind of forgot how logic worked when she was talking with you as she radiated warmth and comfort. Luke had conveniently waited until Julie came into Reggie and Alex’s room to hang out to once again, talk Alex out of doing everything by himself. She had asked, looking a bit too much like a child who just made their ice cream fall on the floor, about if that was the reason Alex was never able to hang out with them outside of his shared room with Reggie and that he missed a lot of fun nights with the three of them. Alex wanted to say no, but that would have been a lie and Julie had those eyes so focused on him, so full of sadness. He was so cornered by those two orbs of sad light that he almost missed the way Reggie and Luke smiled in victory, really not well deserved.

It was easy for them, they didn’t really have a hard time in their respective departments. Reggie was never required to do group project in any of his math classes and Luke was such a leader by default it was not difficult to put everyone on his group to actually work hard on anything. He was agreeable but still able to make everyone understand the importance of each individual role in their final project and how one of them screwing up would make everyone fail. And maybe, that smile of his that he gave everyone that pleased him was kind of his secret weapon. You wouldn’t want to disappoint Luke, you wouldn’t want to miss on the opportunity to get one of his smile directed at you.

The clock indicated that it was 4pm. Alex tried his best to exhale as quietly as his anger permitted. Whatever, he was going back to the dorm and making the assignment by himself. He knew he had promised the band that he was going to try.

He tried.

The guy blew him off. Too bad for his social life and fun nights outside of rehearsal and gigs with the guys and Julie but he wouldn’t let his grade fall down for some stupid ass that couldn’t even find a way to say he couldn’t make it. Not that Alex thought the guy even remembered they had an appointment in the first place. Why was the linguistic department so full of people that just wanted to be on some summer camp for adults ? Why would you even choose to do a master’s degree in sociolinguistic studies if you didn’t care about the subject? He wondered if studies have had been made on that topic.

He got up, getting his phone from his pocket checking for the last time if he didn’t receive some sort of apology message of any kind. Of course, there were none. He couldn’t even contact the guy to write some kind of gigantic rant about how this was not ok. They had been paired up randomly by Mrs Maton. She had put the list of the groups on a sheet on the board at the end of Monday’s “Use of foreign loanwords and representation in the English American language” class. As Alex wasn’t for clumping among others, he had patiently waited, organizing his stuff in his bag while the other students had checked their group partners. As the class had become emptier, he had seen that he had been paired with some guy named William Napleux. Alex didn’t knew who that was, but Alex didn’t know a lot of people and names were a hard thing to master. Unlike Alex, the man had never given his contact info to Mrs Maton and instead of filling the blanks of the “email” and “tel.” boxes, he wrote “Meeting to the library Wednesday 3pm ! :) ” in a turquoise ink. He could have, you know, used Alex phone number to tell him that, or even his mail. But no, the guy decided to impose his preference on him. It had not been a great start. What if Alex had had a class at that time ? He didn’t, but what if?

As Alex exited -stormed- out of the library, he tried hard not to mumble audibly all his angry thoughts by concentrating on his path. He was very prone to falling while walking on a daily basis, not his proudest trait, and deep emotions or distractions would always make the job of not making one with the ground even more difficult.

So he was looking at two or three step ahead of where his feet were supposed to go, making an imaginary guy with a big “William Napleux” label on him eat his macbook because surely he had one. And because he was looking at his feet and thinking of murder, he didn’t see the guy that turned around and collided hard with him.

They both had a recoil as the shock had been quite hard. Alex looked up to glare and say sorry anyway, because this was what he did in general. Glaring and saying sorry.

Hot. It was fucking hot.

The coffee on his shirt was burning his torso. The guy had had two coffee cups in his hands as he bumped into Alex. Fucking hell, that hurt. He was probably looking ridiculous trying to put his shirt as far away from his skin -action that didn’t serve that much purpose as there was still coffee digging holes on his body anyway- and inhaling through his teeth when the other guy talked.

“Sorry ! Oh my gosh I’m so sorry ! Wait I have tissues in my bag !”

Alex was going to answer that everything was ok just to get out the situation, go back to the dorm and take a long and nice shower to get rid of the coffee and his anger of the day. But then he made the mistake of looking at the guy’s face. He was pretty. Really pretty, even with a frown on his face. Somehow that stopped him from talking and escaping the situation. Damn his shallow mind.

The guy was fumbling to reach inside his backpack that was still half on his shoulder, a skateboard under one armpit and the two empty cups of coffee in one hand. He had a helmet on, a tie dye top and some sort of jean shorts with more holes than tissue. Alex still had his two hands holding on his t-shirt with more space stained than spotless. He let go of it.

“I’m fine !” he exclaimed himself, even if he was pretty sure his skin was beginning to melt.

The guy looked up from his backpack, not looking convinced. So Alex put his hands on his pocket and the beginning of a smile on his face.

“You’re sure ?” his eyes stopping on the big stain of coffee on Alex’s shirt. Shit. He was really really pretty.

“Yep ! Totally !” and then he -awkwardly- laughed twice. Just to make his comment more believable.

The guy let go of his backpack. As he managed to put the cups on the trash can next to the bench they were not too far away of, and his skate next by, he said “I would hate for our first meeting to inflict third degree burns on your body”. He was concentrating on getting his helmet off while Alex contemplated the void of his socialization’s skills as he had nothing intelligent -that would not make him look even more like the fool he was- to say. 

The guy’s hair finally came free an Alex hadn’t expected such a length and was surprised by it all. The guy was so damn pretty. The more he looked at him the prettier he became. He tried hard to not stare too obviously at him. He thought he might have failed.

And then something horrible happened. For no reason whatsoever, the guy smiled. And he laughed.

And Alex’s world stopped.

What a view. What a sound. They surely were the reason cinema and microphones were ever invented. To record that moment and immortalize it forever. Not that Alex needed any video to remember that moment until the end of time. The guy smiling was engraved in his brain like an audible gif that could be played at slow speed.

That was the moment that Alex had gone from simply admiring someone prettiness to have the biggest crush he ever had.

The guy said something, but Alex was too busy having his whole world shattered to comprehend something was happening outside of his own brain. He could see his lips moving but his brain didn’t record it.

Alex had had many crushes over the years. Hercules from the Disney movie when he was a kid. Ben, the boy with the neon yellow eastpack backpack in 8th grade. Luke, for a very short period of time until he realized that they were long lost brothers. Reggie’s professor of introduction to dynamical’s systems or whatever the name of the class was. And many more celebrities that he often forgot about after two years of time. But this. Oh, this was different. For so many reasons. For so many horrible reasons.

Alex finally got back to reality, or some version of it, when the guy touched his elbow, visibly distressed by Alex lack of answer to whatever question he had asked him.

“Hm ?” he mumbled, intelligently.

“You’re sure you’re fine ?” said the guy, taking back his warm hand to his own space.

“Yeah ! Yeah fine, very fine !” he replied

“And you ?” he added, two seconds too late for it not to feel awkward to say

The guy laughed again. It was almost better than the first time. Alex was so screwed.

“You’re funny ! Let’s go !” and he began walking towards the library, taking his skate back under one arm, his helmet in his hand.

Alex didn’t understand what was going on but the guy told him let’s go, so going he was. He followed him from behind, the guy looking back at him smiling.

The thing with Alex old crushes is that they were never ever possibilities. Hercules for obvious reasons. Ben because Alex wasn’t even out to himself at that time. Luke because by the time he came out to the boys, he had already figured out that it hadn’t been romantic attraction he felt for his best friend. Reggie’s professor because the guy was forty something and maybe because he also had a ring attached to his fourth finger, plus school regulation and all that jazz. It was always more a fantasy than a real prospect. Same things applied for the celebrities, he was never at any risk to meeting them in the real world.

But here, right now, with a guy roughly his age, on his own college campus, Alex felt very shy and almost embarrassed. There were no excuses. To which city, which country should he move so that he would not feel obligated to ridicule himself in conversation, movement, presence with the man that took his grip on reality and sent it to another galaxy. 

“Where are we going ?” he asked, feeling sad as the guy had stopped looking back at him as they entered the library hall.

The guy laughed again, a bit more silently. Even muffled that sound was incredible. He didn’t answer his question, as if Alex had just made a good joke. He still followed him though. Incomprehension wasn’t really an obstacle at this point. He knew he was gone so if he could enjoy the moment in the perfect company of the guy, he wasn’t going to complain, even if he had no idea what was happening.

The guy led them to a four chairs table in the section where it was acceptable to talk at a reasonable volume. He sat and put his things on the chair next to him. Because Alex was a bit slow in this too fast moving world he had entered five minutes ago, the guy had to smile and tap on the spot in front of him for Alex to understand that he had to sit. So he sat, forgetting he had a backpack too. He then fumbled with it and put it on the floor next to him, looking back at the guy that seemed to have great fun with it all. It made Alex smile too.

“So !” said the guy “What do you think we should focus on ?”

“What ?” said Alex, still smiling, after maybe two seconds of silence. He only remembered he had to reply because the guy moved to fetch his laptop, a macbook, from his bag.

“I thought we could maybe work on the use of foreign words in american movie titles but maybe you’d like to focus on song titles ?”

“What ?” said Alex, again. He tried, really he tried to understand. He was just distracted by the fact that the guy sat in front of him, was talking to him and seemed to like smiling. Alex never really made an effort to do so, but he was beginning to think he actually like smiling too. His cheeks begun to hurt as he was really not used to do so.

“You’d rather work on representation ? I thought about it but I don’t think it would be relevant to talk about representation when we don’t discuss the use of the words first.”

He looked at Alex expectantly.

Alex didn’t want to disappoint him. So he said “What ?”

A crease formed itself between the guy nice brows. Gosh he was admiring someone he just met brows. He couldn’t care less about how pathetic he was. He wished he could call the guy something else than guy. Or imaginary crush.

“Are you sure you’re ok ?” the guy asked.

“Yes yes !” laughed -like always, awkwardly- Alex.

“We can report the meeting if you don’t feel nice” said the guy, slowly closing his laptop.

“No !” he said, a bit too loud for the calm ambiance of the library “No” he said quieter, as he was uncomfortable after seeing so many reprimanding eyes on him. It felt strange to go back to some sort of space where he was not some kind of satellite to the guy.

He knew he begun to sound like those cheesy lyrics Luke had never shared again with them after he tried once to read Reggie and Alex a disgustingly cute poem he wrote for Julie. Oh no. That thought alone made him think he should really get himself together. He would not, ever, be as cheesy as Luke with Julie. Never. It gave him cavities just thinking of them. You could almost see pink hearts floating around whenever they looked into each other eyes. No. Alex was a grumpy adult and he loved that about himself. No man, as pretty as they could be would ever turn him into some sort of optimist. The glass was always half empty and not “half full of our love” as Luke said once, in a freaking dinner. To his credit, he had blushed hearing himself saying it after even Reggie had winced.

“William ?” said a man, surely a professor.

The guy -William apparently- turned his head to the man and said “Hi mister Covington !” smiling in a way that made Alex forgetting his desire of having written “Here lies Alex Mercer, a grumpy old man that never knew how to smile” on his grave.

“Working on your thesis ?”

“No sir, doing an assignment for that optional class I took with my friend Alex here”.

“Hi Alex” said the professor.

“Hi” replied Alex, on autopilot. He had too much thoughts on his head. Plus he just learned the guy was named William. It was a pretty name. Alex almost wished his name was Alexandre. It would have matched more. Yeah, now he was feeling pathetic. But the sound of his name in William’s mouth had been a nice sound anyway. He didn’t remember giving him his name though. Had he ? Given him his name ? His memory of the last ten, twenty, thirty minutes, Alex wasn’t sure, had been a blur of the guy smiling and saying sentences. But somehow, even with the feeling of having blacked out, he knew he hadn’t introduced himself.

“How do you know my name?” he asked. He saw that at some point the professor must have left, because he wasn’t there anymore.

“Hm ?” asked William, typing on his keyboard “Oh you’re back !” he said, looking at Alex. Those eyes were really pretty. For someone who always had a hard time looking into people’s eyes, Alex thought about how much he liked watching into Williams’s.

“Well, why wouldn’t I know your name ?” he told Alex, laughing a bit, going back to writing something on his keyboard.

Why would he know his name ? Had they ever met ? Alex wouldn’t have forgotten that, he was sure of it. He was bad with names and faces, but still.

“Have we met before or something ?” he asked, finally

William looked at him with a puzzled look. “Well, I wouldn’t say that we properly met but we share the same class. Plus I went to the Julie and the Phantoms gig two weeks ago. At that pub on maple street.”

Alex thought about it. Did they share a class ? He didn’t really see much of the audience when he was on the stage and he wasn’t really one for socializing with strangers, even people that came to listen to their gigs after the show was over.

“Oh my god !” said William, shocked after some kind of realization hit him. And then he laughed -again- after saying “you don’t know who I am !”. It was a full-on laugh, with William’s head going back and his chair standing only on two feet. Some of the more annoyed people around them now, looked sharply at them but he didn’t give a damn. One of them coughed on purpose and Alex contemplated making him eat his tongue.

After William finished laughing and wiping the tears that pearled on the corner of his pretty eyes out he said “Let’s meet properly then !”

He held his hand.

“Hi Alex ! I’m William Napleux, your use and representation of foreign loanwords project partner!”

Fuck.

Fucking fuck.

Was it the worst or the best thing that could have ever happened to him in his life, he didn’t know or had the brain capacity to process that question at the moment.

One thing was for sure though.

Reggie, Luke and Julie were right.

It was always better working with others.

**Author's Note:**

> The only reason this thing exist is because I wanted to express how weak of a human I am in front of Willie's smile.


End file.
